By Hunt Palmer
LSU’s season has entered the danger zone.
The Tigers have dropped to 6-10 in SEC play with their fourth straight loss coming Friday in a 10-4 handling at the hands of Texas A&M. LSU’s 10th league loss came on May 11 last season when Arkansas salvaged a game in Baton Rouge.
This is no longer a slump. It’s a flawed team. And Johnson spoke to that in direct terms Friday night.
“It’s a deep-rooted thing,” Johnson said. “We’re off, and this will never happen again. We need to be able to stay on the ball better and hit the ball back through the middle of the field and the other way and hit the ball lower with shorter swings.”
Johnson has been calling for more clutch hitting from this team, specifically with runners in scoring position and two outs. That hasn’t been a strength, and doing it well is a product of good hitters making good swings.
This team has hit the ball out of the ballpark with some frequency but doesn’t put enough pressure on opposing pitchers and defenses.
“It’s not the era that these players that we are coaching right now have grown up in,” Johnson said. “A lot of them talk about exit velo and distance and home runs. And those are great. And we have plenty of home runs. We honestly do…If you attach professional at bats, which is what we’re known for, we’re a staple of, why we have two national championships, with the power on this team, it would be plenty.”
Johnson continued and admitted fundamental flaws in his roster building this time around. The portal is still new. And this is the first ever season with revenue sharing available. College recruiting has never been more volatile.
Johnson has hit and hit and hit in the transfer portal. Tommy White and Paul Skenes will probably always be the headliners. Role players like Daniel Dickinson, Michael Braswell and Chris Stanfield played massive roles on last year’s title team despite not clubbing 20 homers or being first round draft grades.
Jared Jones and Ethan Frey, homegrown talents, left a 35-home run void on the roster. Johnson chased that home run number.
“I made some mistakes in constructing the team and trying to replace two guys that were irreplaceable where we should have looked at replacing them through guys that were already in the program and then replaced the guys that were athletic and could play defense and be more complete players,” he said. “Ok, we won’t make that mistake again. The power moving forward will be from players that start their career here and develop into it like Jake (Brown) has.”
Johnson didn’t call anyone by name, but there were only four portal additions. Seth Dardar is hitting .286 in 12 SEC games with three homers and four doubles. That’s just fine despite his average defense.
Zach Yorke is Grand Canyon’s all-time home runs leader. Brayden Simpson hit 34 home runs in his last two seasons at High Point. Trent Caraway has profiled as a power bat since high school.
That trio has totaled nine home runs this year. It’s not just the power that hasn’t translated. Those three have combined for eight hits in 59 SEC at bats. That’s a .136 batting average without an extra base hit, and their defense is questionable.
Speaking of defense, Johnson spoke to those deficiencies, too. The Tigers are the worst defensive team in the SEC through 16 games.
“That’s on (the coaches) to fix the defense, and I don’t know that that’s a 2026 fix right now,” he said. “That might be a 2027 fix.”
A large chunk of 2026 still remains, though.
“I can’t do anything about (roster construction) now, but what I can do is get (the team) to understand that Texas A&M, a top five team, won the game tonight because they hit the ball hard and low the other way,” Johnson said. “We did that one time, Cade Arrambide did that tonight. Two out RBI, and that was ok. But when we pop up to short, fly ball to centerfield, the appearance is that we’re trying to do too much. And trying to do too much is not a plan or a sign of a mature offensive baseball team.
“That is my responsibility, and that will get fixed. I don’t know if it will happen tomorrow night or not. I’m going to do everything I can to do that, but that will be fixed.”
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